By Sandile Mahlangu

The NWU Symphony Orchestra recently held a Christmas Comes Early concert at the NWU Sanlam Auditorium at the Potchefstroom Campus.

The orchestra was preparing the North West community for the Christmas season with Christmas carols and a Christmas playlist.

André Oosthuizen, the orchestra conductor, said “the concert was to showcase the work that the group has been doing. Playing Christmas music is great and fun for everyone involved, and we just wanted to present a nice, uplifting concert.”

Workers in the public sector are furious with government, accusing it of negotiating “in bad faith” after wage negotiations collapsed following the employer’s 3% wage offer.

Only one of the unions represented, the South African Democratic Teachers Union, has accepted the offer.

Thousands of workers were expected to picket countrywide to demonstrate their unhappiness with the offer on Monday, 31 October. Read more here.

By Oldrin Masowa

The North-West University’s (NWU’s) School of Agricultural Sciences hosted its first ever Agri-Career fair on 19 October on the Potchefstroom Campus.

During the event, final-year students presented the findings of their soil science research and had the opportunity to network with the agricultural industry.

“The aim of the fair is to prepare students for the world of work to expose them to new agricultural skills and technology,” says senior lecturer in Agricultural Sciences, Dr George van Zyl.

By Oldrin Masowa

Where words fail to deliver the message, music becomes the answer. The North-West University’s (NWU’s) School of Music hosted its annual Bursary Winners’ concert to recognise and honour its students for their achievements on 25 October.

Bursaries were awarded to both undergraduate and postgraduate full-time music students, as well as conservatory students who are enrolled for extra-curricular music lessons.

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s selection committee has recently awarded Dr Brews Soyapi, a senior lecturer at the North-West University’s (NWU’s) Faculty of Law, a Georg Forster Research Fellowship for postdoctoral research.

She is the current, defending and undisputed javelin champion of the North-West University (NWU), and Jo-Ané van Dyk was recently crowned the Potchefstroom Campus Sportswoman of the Year again. This excellent javelin thrower showed her steel on the international stage once more in 2022 when she represented South Africa at the African Games, the Commonwealth Games and the World Championships.

Computers are becoming essential in modern society with a tremendous influence on how humans create and solve problems. The North-West University's (NWU’s) Intelligent Systems research group is on a mission to develop next-generation solutions that will help solve transportation problems using technology.

Researchers of the North-West University (NWU) regularly work in communities to improve lives and find solutions to pressing issues. In the fight against breast cancer, a hospital in Potchefstroom has called on the expertise of the Medicine Usage in South Africa (MUSA) research entity in the Faculty of Health Sciences.

More than 100 000 people in South Africa have turned to the waste-picking sector as a source of employment. This is according to Nonhlanhla Ngcobo, a PhD student and a researcher at the South African Chair in Cities, Law and Environmental Sustainability in the Faculty of Law at the North-West University’s (NWU’s) Potchefstroom Campus.

“The slow economic growth rate in South Africa does not bring hope to the 31% of people currently unemployed, especially those with very low levels of education and skills,” she says.

South Africa’s freshwater sources are under pressure from various kinds of contaminants, and North-West University (NWU) researchers are searching for ways to keep track of some of the more elusive pollutants.

Prof Rialet Pieters, a researcher in the Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management, is an ecotoxicologist whose interests lie in organic chemical pollutants and their harmful effects on humans and wildlife.